Re-Inventing The Wheel

থাইম, মধু ও সৃরাচা দিয়ে মুরগি  

Chicken with Honey, Thyme & Sriracha

Serving challenges when you have no dining table! 

I discovered how well Sriracha and thyme compliment each other by accident. I was basting some chicken in thyme-butter one day, and the Sriracha was just sitting there on the counter...calling to me. I added some to the frying pan, purely because I always love a little heat in my food. I realised the combination was a success with my first mouthful, and made a mental note to try it again in the future. Fast forward to early 2018, and I started to make mom's chicken ketchup curry, only to realise there was no tomato ketchup at home. I quickly decided substitute in Sriracha, and as soon as I did I recalled my previous positive experience with thyme. 

I wondered how to incorporate the herb into my curry, eventually deciding to stir it in towards the end of the cooking process. The thyme didn't impart a pronounced enough flavour in this first try. In subsequent iterations, I've also scattered an extra portion into the pot before taking the dish off the heat. All in all, I end up using quite a bit of thyme because it's easily overpowered by the other spices. The herb gives the dish quite a nice after-kick of flavour, but I do recognise this is probably a rather esoteric, acquired taste. I don't think I'd be a fan had I not learned to love thyme while living in the UK. Of course, feel free to leave the thyme out completely if you so desire, and the end result will be a strong, garlicky version of my mom's original curry.  

Basic Bangladeshi Greens, Part 1 of n

Swiss Chard with Mustard & Fennel Seeds

সরষে ও মৌরি দিয়ে সুইস চার্ড 

Messy but delicious

I bought Swiss chard by mistake the other week. Embarrassingly, when I got home and unpacked my groceries, I didn't recognise the plant for what it was. I tentatively trimmed and washed some of it, then cooked it into mac & cheese. I was counting on the smoked cheese from my sauce to cover up any weird tastes or smells. It turned out the apprehension was unnecessary, as eventually someone on Instagram confirmed it was just chard! Chard I could work with, and I initially contemplated cooking the remaining plants just like spinach. Our family relies on the tried and tested garlic-and-chilli combo to cook most of our leafy vegetables, expect for maybe potato leaves and thankuni patha. 

But then I reconsidered, and began wondering how I could incorporate mustard into the dish. I've been a little obsessed with mustard since moving to Scotland, and I go through this thought process for pretty much everything I cook now. I decided ground mustard seeds would work quite nicely as a base flavour, with some fennel seeds as complement. I rounded off the ingredients list with a little turmeric for colouring, and some sliced onion to ease the frying process. The result was a win: think soft pieces of plant peppered with caramelised onion, each mouthful accentuated by a slight prickly heat from the mustard. I'm definitely adding this to my regular vegetarian repertoire. Speaking of which, I'm hoping to post more recipes for easy to cook greens, hence the title of this post. The recipe below makes enough for 2 as a small side, but scales up quite easily. 

Places to Eat in the Riviera Maya

Tulum Beach, Riviera Maya

I haven’t travelled as much I would have liked to recently because life happened. However, things are changing - and last year I did get to spend a week on holiday in the Riviera Maya, Mexico. The Riviera Maya is a long stretch of Caribbean coastline on the eastern side of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, known for its beaches, blue seas and archaeological sites. In short, I’ve always wanted to visit. To see Mayan ruins, yes, but also - and unsurprisingly for me - because of the food I would get to eat! However, while planning my trip I struggled to find (English language) blogs with recommendations for places to try. Hence now that I’m back, I’m putting together this post listing places to eat by area. 

I have no expertise whatsoever on Mexican food, so these are just my favourites from the establishments I managed to visit. One of my cooking teachers sent me a great cartoon infographic illustrating the different terms used to describe Mexican dishes. Do check it out as a starting point if you're not exactly sure what a fajita is (I wasn't before I went!!). Be aware that everything below is "post-Hispanic" cuisine, and I didn't make it to restaurants like Axiote which serve grasshoppers and ant eggs. Also don't worry if insects don't appeal to you, as there'll be plenty of meat, cheese and tortillas abound instead. The list is also by no means exhaustive, but hopefully I'll remedy that by traveling back over the years and adding more to it! On this trip I was mostly in Playa Del Carmen, with a couple of days in Cancun and a day in Tulum, and my picks are based on these areas.  

The parts of Mexico I managed to see, downtown Cancun in particular, really reminded me of Bangladesh. The local buses with their loosely defined stops, the rain-worn buildings that could use a lick of paint and the chillies in my food - all this felt a little like home. Of course, a lot of this in my imagination, and Mexico is far more economically developed. The local buses may look rickety, but many of the drivers speak English. Gleaming new buildings are the norm if you head to the hotel zone, and not everything is still under construction like it seems to be in Dhaka these days. For now, I live in hope that one day Dhaka will catch up! 

New Year's Eve Snacking

ডালের বড়া 

Daaler Bora or Lentil Fritters

My batch of NYE daal bora, all plated up for us to devour

Happy New Year everyone! To kick-off 2018, I'm posting a very traditional recipe for daaler bora, or lentil fritters. 

The daaler bora is very different from the other fritters I've written about for the blog. First of all, it has no flour - gram or otherwise - and the daal or lentil is what goes straight into the hot oil. Secondly, making a batch of them is a bit of a challenge: the lentils need planned pre-soaking, followed by blending and careful frying to avoid disintegration. Oddly enough, in generations past they were considered an easy enough snack to whip up. I assume this is because households would have lentils soaking anyway as part of their daily routine, and making daaler bora would just involve swiping some from that stash. Things have changed nowadays though, and in our family the daaler bora is usually bought from neighbourhood eateries - at least when we're in Bangladesh. It's much less frequently made at home, and usually only for special occasions like Ramadan, when it's an iftaar staple. In general, the daaler bora is a tea-time snack, though it can also be eaten as a side during a larger meal. The fritters are also the first phase of another dish called the doi bora, though I'm not a big fan.

The ingredients used vary from family to family, and change between Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, as well as between Hindu and Muslim families. My family recipe is quite basic, using only one type of lentil, salt, chilli, turmeric and onion. Other families may use a mix of different lentils, and also add spices and herbs to liven things up. In the recipe below I've added coriander, but otherwise I've kept things pretty simple. I've also snuck in a bit of baking powder, something one of our chefs taught me to do, as it makes the boras stay crunchier for longer. This is really useful if you want to make them a little ahead, as I was doing to take to a New Year's party an hour away. Boras like these are usually served with dips and sauces. I served my most recent batch with sriracha, but tamarind-based sauces or ketchup are the more common accompaniment. The recipe below makes about 24 boras, each about 3.00 centimetres across. 

Making Jhol

Curried Coconut Broth

Curried coconut broth 

I'm saving up to go travelling in 2018, so I didn't fly back to Bangladesh in December this year. Instead I'm spending the holidays with a few friends, and we all pitched in to cook different things for Christmas day. I made the roast, stuffing and gravy - but I did things a little differently from usual with the gravy. I'm a big fan of the traditional version made from pan juices, but I normally underestimate how much we want and make too little. To make sure we didn't run into the same problem again, I just made a broth from scratch. This is partially inspired by the super common curry sauce served over chips in UK fish and chip shops, but made a little richer with the addition of coconut milk. It worked really well with the spiced roast we made, but be warned the below portions makes quite a lot!